A Song Of Shadows Part 34

'Do you know who was on desk duty that day?'

'I can check.'

The orderly came back with the names of three staff members, one of whom happened to working elsewhere in Golden Hills that evening. Walsh spoke to him in person, and called the other two from his cellphone in the lobby.

When he was done, he had added four more names to the list of visitors.

64.

A light burned in the detective's house, but Werner could see no sign of Parker. With Engel and Hummel dead, and Theodora Hummel revealed to be her father's child in her capacity for self-preservation, Werner felt that they were almost out of danger.

Baulman still concerned Werner, but with Engel's death the threat to the old man had receded. Of course, there might be more inconsistencies in Baulman's paperwork if they dug deeply enough, but it would take them a long time to a.s.semble a workable case against him, if they could manage it at all. They still had allies in Germany, the last vestiges of the Kamaradenwerk, and files were easily lost, even in this computerized age. It would be less complicated than getting rid of Baulman, especially with the Justice Department still circling him, at whatever the distance. But if it came down to it, he would find a way to remove Baulman from the picture, one that wouldn't draw too much attention. It would have been difficult in the past because Baulman was the amateur accountant, the Geldscheisser, but now the money was reduced to small change at the bottom of the jar, and Baulman's importance to them had vanished with it.

That left only the detective. His continued presence in Boreas was unfortunate, and his visit to Werner's house had left the pastor deeply disturbed. He had decided against moving Oran Wilde's body. It was too risky. Maybe once all this was over ...

Werner knew that he had to kill the detective. It wasn't just that Parker would keep looking, for that alone would not necessarily bring him down upon them. No, it was the fact that he had a kind of luck. It was a function of his perseverance, Werner supposed. What was that old Woody Allen line: eighty percent of success is showing up? Well, Parker showed up, and once established, he didn't go away. If a man had the patience to wait and watch for long enough, something of the world would reveal itself to him, especially if he already knew what he was hoping to see.

But Werner also admitted to himself that he wanted to kill the detective. Had he been alive to see it, Steiger might have acknowledged that he was mistaken, at least to a degree, about Werner's nature. Killing might not have given him pleasure, but it did endow him with a sense of vocation, beyond paying lip service to a G.o.d in whom he often struggled to believe.

A figure appeared on the beach, emerging from the shadows to the north. It was the detective. He was wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt, with a hooded top hanging open over it. Werner had heard that the detective walked regularly on the beach as part of his efforts at rehabilitation. It appeared that he had resumed this habit. Werner checked the time. Was the detective a man of routine? Possibly, but Werner decided to allow an hour either side for safety.

A day or two, he thought. I will give it a day or two in the hope that fortune intervenes. If not, I'll kill him.

65.

Parker ate breakfast at Olesens the next morning before beginning a door-to-door canva.s.s of stores and businesses on and off Main Street. When he was done, he drove west to the small town of Cawton, parked in the munic.i.p.al lot, and took a window table at a coffee shop called Ma Baker's, where the coffee was terrible and the pastries worse, but which gave him a clear view of a neat house with flowering planters on the windowsills and a car in the drive.

After an hour, an elderly man appeared at the door of the house, holding a Weimaraner on a leash. Parker left the coffee shop, and intercepted him as he headed for a pedestrian access between two buildings that led down to a pebbled beach.

'Mr Baulman?' said Parker.

'Yes?'

The dog looked to its master for some clue as to how to behave toward the newcomer.

'My name is Charlie Parker. I'm looking into the death of Ruth Winter.'

Baulman barely reacted. He might even have been expecting Parker to appear, so unperturbed did he appear, and he did not give any of the answers that might have been antic.i.p.ated in such a situation. He said only, 'I can't help you.' Beside him, the dog stared up mournfully at the stranger who had interrupted the routine of their walk.

Parker extended a card.

'In case you think of anything.'

Baulman took the card, tore it in two, and threw the pieces to the wind.

'I told you: I can't help you.'

Parker watched the halves of his card blow away.

'Well, thank you for your time,' he said.

Baulman continued on his walk. The sun was starting to set. Parker walked to his car and returned to Boreas to wait.

66.

Cambion's decline was accelerating. He drifted between consciousness and unconsciousness, and was not always able to identify those in the room with him, even though only Edmund and the woman attended him. He spoke to figures that were not present except as memories, and argued with G.o.ds that had no name. He was a being in absolute torment, his physical and psychological pain mingling until one became indistinguishable from the other, so that even dosed up on morphine he remained in a realm of confused agony.

The only events to have roused him from his sufferings were those taking place far to the north in Boreas, Maine. During the hour or so each day when he was semi-cogent Cambion tended to be more alert in the morning he would ask Edmund to show him the newspapers on a laptop computer, the reports magnified to such a degree that just a sentence or two filled the screen. When even seeing these grew beyond him, the news stories were read aloud to him, though the s.p.a.ce allotted to them grew smaller and smaller as progress in the investigation slowed, then stopped.

That very afternoon, Edmund had heard Cambion half-awake, half asleep talking with one of his specters. This time, it was Earl Steiger.

'You came up against the wrong man, Earl,' Cambion was saying. 'This one has the breath of G.o.d upon him. This one bleeds from the palms of his hands ...'

But now Cambion was silent. The bedroom stood at the back of the house, on the first floor. It had a single small window, which Edmund had nailed shut. The only ventilation came from a grating in a corner. The room stank, but it remained reasonably secure.

Edmund could see that Cambion was already half gone from this world, with one foot in the beyond. It would not be long now. He sat by his master's bed, and gently bathed his brow with a damp cloth. Cambion was no longer eating, but Edmund forced him to take water mixed with a little protein powder. Sometimes Cambion managed to keep it down.

Edmund and the woman had fitted Cambion with a catheter. A plastic sheet placed on the bed made it easier to clean him when he soiled himself, and prevented the sheets and mattress from being ruined. It was Edmund who wiped him, and Edmund who fed him. The woman kept her distance unless it was absolutely necessary to approach him. Her hatred for Cambion added a further pollutant to the atmosphere of the room. For a time Edmund had wondered why she had even agreed to take him in. Initially he thought her need for money was so desperate that she could not bring herself to refuse, but he had come to recognize the pleasure she derived from bearing witness to Cambion's final sufferings, a pleasure complicated still further by the memory of the love she once bore for him. In a terrible way, she now shared his torments.

None of this was spoken aloud by Edmund. He was not mute: he had simply made a decision not to speak, for no words could describe what he had seen during his years with Cambion. He had not killed for him, but he had watched others do so, although in later years he had refused even to do this. He would transport Cambion to wherever he needed to go an opulent bedroom, a quiet bas.e.m.e.nt, a disused garage and leave him to his pleasures or, as his condition worsened, to live vicariously through the pleasures of others. Sometimes Edmund would still be able to hear what was happening, so he grew to be a connoisseur of noise-canceling headphones, which helped. He disliked listening to music to disguise the sound of suffering and dying, though. He found that the melodies became tainted by the knowledge of what they had been used to obscure. Slowly, surely, he began to speak less and less, until eventually he did not speak at all. He feared that if he tried to do so, the only sound to emerge would be a scream.

Yet, like the woman who hovered in the background, waiting for this man to die, he had a kind of love for Cambion, and a deep loyalty. He loved him because it was too easy to hate him. He was loyal to him because there was so much to betray.

Edmund used the cloth to wipe Cambion's mouth. It came away with blood on it, and the water turned pink when he dropped the cloth in the bowl. He set it aside, found the balm, and used it to moisten Cambion's dry lips. At no point did Cambion open his eyes.

Edmund walked to the bathroom and emptied the b.l.o.o.d.y water down the sink, then refilled the bowl. His eyes itched. He suffered from lagophthalmos, a partial facial paralysis that prevented his eyelids from closing, depriving the eyes of effective lubrication. He tilted his head back and tipped some drops into them. His vision had just cleared when he heard a sound at the front door of the house the squeak of the handle being tested.

He put down the bowl, drew his gun, and moved into the hallway. Only a lamp burned there. He stayed very still, watching the door. The handle did not move. Still, he was certain of what he had heard.

Then Cambion cried out in alarm.

Edmund rushed to the bedroom. Cambion's eyes were open, and one ruined hand was pointing toward the window.

'Something there,' said Cambion. 'Something bad.'

Edmund stepped carefully to the drapes, and pulled them away from the wall at one side. It gave him only a peripheral view, but it was enough.

A face stared back at him. It reminded Edmund of a piece of gray, rotting fruit that had decayed almost to white, an impression strengthened by the wrinkles around its mouth and at the edges of its empty eye sockets. Then it retreated, and he might have begun to doubt that he had ever seen it were it not for what happened next.

A cigarette burned briefly in the yard next door. The house was empty and boarded up, the lawn a wasteland of trash and weeds, but now a man stood among them. In the glow of the cigarette, Edmund glimpsed his lank receding hair, and a white shirt b.u.t.toned to the neck.

The Collector, the claimer of souls, had found them: the Collector, and the empty husks who walked with him.

And Edmund was afraid.

'Edmund,' said Cambion, and when the giant looked to him he saw his own fear reflected in Cambion's eyes, but also a depth of awareness that had not been present in them for many months, like the last flaring of a candle before its flame dies out forever. Cambion knew who and what was out there.

'The phone,' said Cambion. 'I want you to dial a number for me, then put me on speaker.'

A cheap, untraceable burner phone lay on the bedside locker. Only Earl Steiger had used it to call, but now Earl Steiger was dead. Cambion dredged up the number from memory. It never changed, and few had it.

Louis answered on the second ring.

'Who is this?'

'A dead man,' said Cambion. 'Do you know me?'

'Yes,' said Louis. 'I know you.'

'The Collector has found me.'

'Good,' said Louis.

Cambion coughed. It took Edmund a moment to realize that it was the ghost of a laugh.

'I think you may have fed me to him.'

'I tried, but you slipped the noose. Looks like he didn't give up.'

'He is persistent. It's almost admirable.'

Cambion's mouth was drying up. He gestured for water. Edmund placed a straw between his lips and squeezed the liquid into his mouth from the plastic bottle.

'Are you calling to say goodbye?' asked Louis. 'If so, consider it done.'

'I'm calling to give you a gift,' said Cambion.

'You've got nothing I want.'

'I have information.'

There was silence on the other end of the phone, then Louis said, 'Earl Steiger. He was one of yours.'

'Very good. But he was more than one of mine: he was the last.'

'And Charlie Parker buried him.'

'No, G.o.d buried him.'

'I didn't think you believed in G.o.d.'

'I feel His presence. I stand at the crossing of worlds. I await His judgment.'

'You're raving.'

'No, I am offering a trade.'

'To me?'

'To G.o.d. I'm asking Him to decide what a soul is worth, what my soul is worth.'

'I can tell you that in nickels and dimes.'

'It's not for you to determine.'

'So you're trying to save yourself? You're deluded.'

'No, I see with absolute clarity. Here it is, my parting gift to you: Earl Steiger was hired by a preacher named Werner to kill Ruth Winter and Lenny and Pegi Tedesco. It wasn't the first time that Werner had used him. Werner's nature is corrupt. He is a fanatic.'

'Why did Werner hire him?'

'I didn't ask. I rarely do. Steiger told me a little of him. Werner is a neo-n.a.z.i, but the ones he guards are the real thing.'

'Did Werner kill the Wilde family?'

'Yes, according to Steiger. He was also holding the boy, Oran, but he's certainly dead by now. Werner was the one who tortured Perlman, before he went into the sea. He kills to protect.'

'Do you have proof? Without proof-'

Again came that hacked laugh.

'Now you know where to look,' said Cambion. 'The proof you'll have to find for yourself. Goodbye, Louis. You were right to decline my offer of employment. I think you would have turned on me in the end.'

'This won't save you,' said Louis. 'You think you're going to avoid d.a.m.nation with one phone call?'

'Not d.a.m.nation,' said Cambion. 'Just a form of it.'

He nodded at Edmund, who killed the connection. The light was already fading from Cambion's eyes, to be replaced by the pure terror of the final darkness. He stared at the closed drapes, as though he could pierce through to what waited for him beyond them. Edmund heard a scratching at the gla.s.s, as of nails picking at the window, and from the hall came the low creak of the doork.n.o.b being tried again. The woman screamed from somewhere upstairs. Perhaps they were already in the house.

'There is still money in the bag,' said Cambion. His gaze lit briefly on a brown satchel lying at the top of the bedroom closet. 'Some jewels too, I think, and a handful of Swiss gold francs. Take it.'